Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


J. F. HAWK, 
 
an extensive and prosperous farmer, residing five miles west of Compton, has 
been a resident of the county since 1873. He is now farming 1,700 acres of land, 
the principal crop being barley, of which he raises a superior quality. He also 
owns a farm of forty acres near Downey. When first he came to the county Mr. 
Hawk was employed for several years in Los Angeles City by the Southern Pacific 
Railroad Company, as clerk, and he subsequently devoted his time and attention 
to agricultural pursuits. Mr. Hawk is a native of Indiana, was born in 1849, and 
is the son of James and Caroline (Newell) Hawk. His parents were natives of 
Ohio, and moved at an early day to La Salle County, Illinois, where the subject 
of this sketch was principally reared and educated. Besides a liberal 
common-school education, he pursued the higher branches of study at the Grand 
Prairie Seminary at Orange, Illinois. He afterward figured as a pedagogue, and 
taught three years in Iroquois and other counties in Illinois. In 1881 he 
selected as his partner through life Miss Mattie Willets, of Leesburgh, Indiana. 
She is the daughter of Enos and Elmira (Wood) Willets, natives of Ohio, and 
pioneers of Indiana. Mr. and Mrs. Hawk have an interesting family of three 
children: Leroy, Walter and Olga. Politically Mr. Hawk is a stanch supporter of 
the principles as taught by the Republican party. Being a scholar and a man of 
close observation, he is one whose opinion, on matters both public and private, 
is received with deference by all who know him.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 758
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler